Chapter Text
The air was crisp, autumn settling in nicely and changing the colors of the trees from a dull green to a vibrant red. A freshly-brewed white mocha was clutched tightly in the hand of one Mabel Pines as she headed for the door of her campus’ Starbucks, hand-knit purple scarf flaring out behind her as her shoes pattered quietly on the tile floor, one foot getting caught up in the other and sending her stumbling forward.
Crisp air, red leaves, a purple scarf, and Mabel’s mocha, now spilled onto the dress and shoes of a very blonde, very annoyed-looking girl.
The art student couldn’t help but gape, even as her cardboard cup clattered to the floor and dripped out its remaining contents for an underpaid employee to mop up later. The victim of her catastrophe seemed just as shocked, hands still outstretched as if she could wind back time and save the dress than Mabel was now worrying was designer.
In fact, there wasn’t much about this girl that didn’t scream “I’m rich and not afraid to show it,” from her silk infinity scarf down to her leather (coffee-splattered) boots. Her nails were freshly-manicured, evident even as her hands clenched tightly into fists and her eyes narrowed. Blonde hair fell naturally straight down her back, jumping as her head snapped up so she could give Mabel a glare that could have frozen over Hell.
“Oh my god,” Mabel blurted, because really, what else was there to say? “I’m so sorry.” Oh, right. That.
The girl’s upper lip curled back into what was almost a snarl as she stared down at her dress. Oh, god, her dress, why did it have to be white?! Well, off-white with a black lattice stitching, but it would be impossible to take out the coffee stain all the same.
“I- I can buy you a new dress,” she offered, eyes dropping to her fallen cup and the little coffee that stained her own Mary Janes, mocking her. Her own outfit, an oversized galaxy-print sweater thrown over yoga pants, could have taken the blow; the blonde’s outfit couldn’t.
“Doubtful,” the girl snapped. “It’s Versace.”
Mabel’s heart plummeted into her stomach as she recalled flipping through her mother’s magazines and gaping, browsing through Bloomingdale’s and blinking at price tags with four-digit numbers. “I… can buy you a coffee?” She offered a playful grin. The girl didn’t return it.
Instead, she stared at Mabel in angered disbelief before giving a, “Hmmph!” and turning on her heel, swiftly exiting the coffee shop without buying what she came in for or attempting to sop up any of the liquid ruining her outfit.
Mabel’s cheeks burned even though she knew that most of the shop’s patrons were too focused on typing papers or chatting with friends to notice the incident. She grabbed a handful of napkins and set to work cleaning up her mess before a worker was forced to offer to do it instead.
I can’t believe I pulled a Dipper, she thought as she tossed her empty cup and napkins into the trash. Pulling her phone out of her pocket revealed that she didn’t have much time left to get to class, so she washed her hands quickly in the shop’s bathroom before going back out into the cold.
The cool air felt nice against her warm face, and she tried to push the situation out of her mind. For now. Just until class was over.
-----
Class didn’t last forever, and the moment she was back in her apartment, the memory of the blonde girl was back to haunt her brain and nag at her until she eventually resolved to call the one person she knew who was used to humiliating himself on a daily basis.
“It was awful, Dipper!” she cried, pulling one of the couch’s embroidered throw pillows up to cover her face. From the other side of the country, her twin brother sighed.
“People spill their drinks on other people all the time,” Dipper offered (of course he would say that; Dipper was klutz central). She didn’t pull her face out of the pillow, but she could imagine that he was shrugging into his webcam.
“You don’t get it,” she groaned into the pillow, voice muffled. “You don’t get it,” she repeated as she pulled the velvet away from her face, giving her brother her best woe-is-me look. He rolled his eyes. “I ruined her dress. Her Versace dress.” By the blank look the boy gave her, he had no idea what that meant, and now it was her turn to roll her eyes. “I’m a fashion student, Dipper! I’m a fashion student and I killed a brand-name dress! Killed it, dug its grave, and threw it in!”
Her twin tried not to look amused, giving her an unimpressed stare before cocking an eyebrow, lips twitching as he fought not to smile. “Yeah, Mabes, you’re a fashion student,” he said slowly, looking expectant. When she just frowned again, he sighed and continued, “If anybody could figure out how to revive a dead brand-name dress, it’d be you.”
She stared blankly at her computer screen and her brother’s goofy smile. “Dipdop, no amount of tailoring could cover up-” She broke off as it hit her and she gasped, eyes widening. “Dipper, you’re a genius!”
His smile turned smug. “Well, I do like to think-”
“Gotta go, Dippingsauce!” Her cursor hovered over the “end call” button as she bounced excitedly in her seat, shaking the computer on her lap and making her webcam’s projection of her look blurry in the bottom righthand corner of her screen.
“Wait, Mabel-”
“Bye!”
She ended the call and slammed her laptop shut, setting it down and jumping up off the couch. She had some shopping to do.
-----
Her Mabel Logic was eager but concise: if she couldn’t buy the girl a new dress, she’d make one.
It was impossible to accurately guess the blonde girl’s dress size, but Mabel was an expert. She took her memory of the girl’s overall form along with the knowledge that the blonde had been at least a good two inches taller than her to get an approximate. The girl had worn a black jacket over her dress, but Mabel knew enough about how fabric sits over skin to recognize how much thickness the jacket added to the girl’s form.
Overall, the girl had been tall and slender, in a healthy-looking kind of way. She was likely an avid exerciser, or at the very least a very healthy eater, and Mabel took this into account as she measured and cut fabric.
She had planned to replicate the dress to the best of her abilities, but she got a little… sidetracked. She got as far as keeping the just-barely-cream color and the black lattice pattern, but she couldn’t help but add an autumnal twist to it. Stitchings of varying shades of red and orange fell in with the black, giving the dress a colorful pop.
It wasn’t a brightly-colored cat sweater like the many that filled her closet at her home in California, but it still screamed “Mabel” just as loudly as any of them did.
In between classes, studying, and sleep, it took her nearly a week to put the finishing touches on the dress. When she was satisfied with the final outcome, she hand-stitched her name and the instructions, “Hand Wash Only!!!” onto tag fabric and sewed it into the inside hem.
An original Mabel creation! Made with as much love as she could give to a complete stranger.
She was hesitant to fold it but had no choice but to, and she tucked it into several layers of tissue paper before placing it into a gift box. The box was tied with a bow that she re-tied a dozen times before finally being satisfied. She considered adding a handwritten note, but there really wasn’t much more to say. Hopefully, the dress would speak enough itself.
Now came the difficult part.
-----
Maybe expecting the girl to return to the same Starbucks was a bit too hopeful.
The first day that Mabel entered the coffee shop, fancy gift box in hand, she had come in with all of the enthusiasm that had overcome her while making the dress itself. She decided that her best bet was to come at the same time that she had encountered the girl the first time, around ten in the morning. The girl had looked to be about her age and definitely had the hipster-y appearance of an art student, so there was a good chance that she attended the same university and would stop in for a coffee before class.
Mabel sipped her mocha from a table facing the door for a good hour before she had to give up and get ready for Calculus.
On the second day, she brought work with her. She sketched out skirt designs and nibbled at a scone while the box sat on her table, untouched. She spent the better part of two hours watching the door expectantly, perking up at every head of blonde hair only to deflate when it wasn’t accompanied by icy blue eyes and too-nice clothes.
She let her mind wander to the girl as her pencil etched across her sketchbook. What was her name? What was her story? What would she order at Starbucks?
Today wouldn’t be the day for her to find out. When she still hadn’t shown up and Mabel had to leave for class, she considered just leaving the box with the barista and and giving her best description of her mystery girl. But she couldn’t. She had spent too much time fretting over the dress to risk it ending up in the hands of somebody other than the actual girl herself.
Plus, she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t eager to see how the girl reacted.
On the third day, she watched cat videos on her laptop and drank an iced tea. The Starbucks was full of students this morning, kids rushing to study for midterms and taking up every available table, and when an elderly man asked if he could sit opposite her to drink his coffee, she said yes and chattered aimlessly to him about her girl. She learned that his name was Henry and even when she got invested in a story about his late wife, she didn’t let her attention wander too far from the door.
On the fourth day, she had class in the morning and wasn’t able to stop in until late afternoon. Though it went away from her surefire plan of the girl arriving at the same time as the week before, she figured it was worth a shot and it allowed her time to type a paper for her English class. A barista finally asked her if she was waiting for somebody special, and Mabel perked up at that word. “Special.” Her mystery girl.
Somehow, this girl had continued to completely consume her thoughts. Mabel had only interacted with her for a minute, and the only words she had heard the girl speak were short and flat-out rude, but she couldn’t deny that she was slightly infatuated.
Mysteries were Dipper’s thing, not hers. But there was something exciting about this, about waiting so eagerly for a girl that she knew nothing about other than the fact that she had enough money to wear Versace and not be hesitant to show it off. It was thrilling, just the thing she needed to make her slow first semester at college heat up just as the weather got cold.
“Sort of,” she answered with a grin.
On the fifth day, Mabel was so hopeful to see the dress owner that she worried she was hallucinating when the girl actually walked through the door.
But there she was, a dark green slouch-beanie in place on her head and a white sweater dress hugging her form. She slipped sunglasses off her face and into her plum-colored purse as she walked through the door, and Mabel was on her feet with the gift box in her hands before the girl had taken three steps.
The girl stopped shortly, the clicking of her heels pausing as she reared back in surprise. Her eyes widened as she recognized Mabel and her giant grin, then quickly flew to the lavender box in her hands, brows narrowing.
“Hi!” Mabel started, thrusting her arms out and offering the box. The girl took a half-step back, scarlet-tinted lips parting in surprise. “Hi, I’m not sure you remember me-?”
“Coffee girl,” she replied, expression souring as her eyes once again moved from Mabel’s face back down to the box. Her hands were brought up towards her chest, moving slowly as if she was considering accepting the box but worried it would bite.
“That’s me!” she answered cheerily, shaking the box slightly. The girl took it but held it with the tips of her fingers, still looking hesitant. “So, you were right that I can’t afford to replace your dress, so I made you a new one!”
“You made-” The girl broke off, clutching the box a bit more solidly despite now looking like she truly believed Mabel insane. She readjusted her purse strap on her shoulder before swiftly pulling the bow undone and tucking the lid beneath the box, fingers quickly moving to pull away the tissue paper.
The girl couldn’t properly pull the dress out with one hand, especially standing in the middle of Starbucks as college students roughly pushed past them on their way to the counter or their way out the door, but she clutched at the fabric anyways, eyes wide. Mabel was hit with a sudden surge of self-consciousness and an overwhelming desire for this girl to like her creation.
She shouldn’t care so much; she didn’t even know this girl. But there was something deep inside of her that longed to see the other girl’s face light up, to see a real smile on her face.
She wasn’t saying anything, so Mabel had to fill the silence. “I had to guess on your size, but I think I got pretty close. And I added some color to it, too, so I hope that’s okay…” She trailed off as she reexamined the girl’s outfit, noting that she was, once again, wearing white. The blonde’s eyes still hadn’t left the dress, fingers trailing lightly over the stitching, so Mabel joked, “I know it’s no Versace, but-”
“Thank you.”
“-it’s definitely original- wait, what?”
The girl still looked shocked, and while she wasn’t smiling, there was something in her eyes that made Mabel believe her words. “Thank you for this,” she repeated, shaking the box slightly. “You didn’t have to… I mean, it was an accident. I… I overreacted. You didn’t have to put so much work into this. And then you- wait.” She frowned, and Mabel’s heart sank as her overwhelming relief at the fact that the girl liked the dress quickly dissipated back into nervousness; she desperately wished to see that almost-happy look back on the girl’s face. The blonde pursed her lips, slowly asking, “How did you even know I’d be here?”
“Oh.” Mabel chuckled nervously, grinning like a goof, but the girl gave her a blank stare in return. She tucked her thumbs into her cardigan pockets, rocking back on her heels and cursing the butterflies in her stomach. “Well, I sorta… well, it was ten A.M. when I saw you last week, so I’ve been stopping in at this time every day, and, uh… anyways! I’m so glad you like it!”
“You- whatever.” She broke off, shaking her head and looking back to the dress. “It’s beautiful,” she agreed. “Seriously, this… the fact that you did this, that was so… nice.” While the word “nice” didn’t exactly seem fitting and the girl’s words seemed strained, they didn’t seem ungenuine. More like she wasn’t used to saying them.
Based on her clothes and overall persona, it wouldn’t have surprised Mabel if this girl wasn’t used to having to thank people for things.
Mabel opened her mouth to speak, but broke off when she locked her gaze with those blue eyes once more. Really, she had no idea how this girl captivated her so much. She was from California; practically every girl she went to school with was a rich, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Valley girl. But there was just something about the way that this girl-
Her phone alarm went off in her pocket, making her jump and the other girl drop the lid of the box.
“I- I gotta get to class,” she rushed out in lieu of an apology, quickly silencing her phone and throwing a glance back towards her table.
“O-oh. Yeah, of course.” Was it just Mabel, or did the girl look a bit disappointed?
It was probably just Mabel.
They said their goodbyes, the girl thanking her once more for the dress. Mabel gathered up her things as the girl went to order her drink, and she only let herself sneak one more glance back at the girl on her way out.
She found her smiling down at the box, clutching it tightly to her chest.
-----
“Are you Mabel Pines?”
Mabel had been up most of the night, maybe taking slightly after her brother as she studied for the midterms that she had been ignoring in her plight to find her mystery girl. She had only managed to catch two hours of sleep before having to drag herself out of bed for a morning class, so it was understandable that she was confused that her barista was asking her a question before she had even ordered her coffee.
“Huh?” she asked, because really, huh? He was the one wearing a nametag, not her (she checked).
“Is your name Mabel?”
Once the question registered more firmly in her mind, she beamed. Confused as she was, that was an easy one. “All day every day!”
The barista blinked. The dark circles under his eyes could have rivaled her brother’s, and that was saying something. “Riiiight,” he drawled slowly, his expression clearly screaming, ‘I’m not paid enough for this.’ After a sigh, he continued, “A girl paid for your drink already. She said you’d want a white mocha. Is that true?”
Though this increased Mabel’s confusion tenfold, she nodded. The barista didn’t wait for any more confirmation before writing her order on a cardboard cup and passing it off to the person making the drinks. When he returned his tired stare to her, she quickly hurried over to the pickup counter to wait for the beverage that she hadn’t paid for.
Oh, wowie. What was going on? None of Mabel’s friends were so cryptic, and most of them wouldn’t even be up early enough to come into Starbucks before she did. So who would have have come in and paid for her drink, but not bothered to leave their name?
It couldn’t be the dress girl… could it?
Why would the dress girl buy her a drink? Sure, it was the same drink that Mabel had spilled on her, so maybe she was going for something ironic, but...
No, she hadn’t told the dress girl her name. If she had, she would have caught the other girl’s name as well and started referring to her as something other than “the dress girl” in her mind.
She was halfway to her class and her mocha was a fourth of the way gone when she remembered that she had stitched her name into the tag of the dress.